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Democrats.com plays the age card

vastleft's picture
Submitted by vastleft on Tue, 08/26/2008 - 10:30pm

I was glad to find out that democrats.com isn't an official organ of the party, because whoever wrote this sounds like a total, um, organ:

McCain Owes America An Alzheimer's Test

While Ted Kennedy and Michelle Obama were rocking the Democratic convention in Denver, John McCain made his 13th appearance with Jay Leno to joke about his age. McCain joked, "You forgot to mention that I warned the people about the British coming," and added, "my Social Security number is eight."

McCain has repeatedly tried to dismiss concerns about his age with late-night jokes. On Saturday Night Live, he quipped: "What should we be looking for in our next president? Certainly someone who is very, very, very old."

But McCain's age is no joke. He will turn 72 on Friday and would be halfway to 73 if elected and sworn in on January 20. That would make him the oldest first-term President ever, two years older than Ronald Reagan. He has survived four skin cancers (melanomas), including one in 2000 that was classified as Stage IIa.

McCain is two years older than his father was when he died suddenly of a heart attack at 70. He is 11 years older than his grandfather was when he died suddenly of a heart attack at age 61.

The United States cannot afford the risk that McCain would die suddenly in the middle of an international crisis.

Nor can we afford the risk of dementia. 22% of Americans over 70 are affected by mild cognitive impairment, while 13% of Americans over 65 have Alzheimer's.

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lambert's picture
Submitted by lambert on

McCain should say, sure, I'll be tested -- right along with my good friend Joe Biden.

[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

a little night musing's picture
Submitted by a little night ... on

First of all, if McCain at age 72 has not developed any signs of Alzheimer's yet, the odds of it happening in the next four years are next to none.

Secondly, this cancer-survivor smearing has been addressed here in response to another, similar attack. (The blog author is a cancer surgeon and researcher.) Bottom line:

John McCain had melanoma. He was successfully treated for it, and has been cancer-free for seven years, making the likelihood of a recurrence very small. Whatever reasons one might have for not wanting him to be President, even if his having survived melanoma is one of them (an aspect of the overall package that, in McCain's case, I rank pretty darned low on the list of reasons not to vote for him, given the low likelihood of his tumor recurring), using the term "cancer-ridden" as part of a string of disparaging adjectives gives the impression that the vile moron who wrote the above sentence views being a cancer survivor as something to be ashamed of, something on the same order of being dishonest, crazy, or a madman.

For the record, I'm not planning to vote for McCain nor am I defending his candidacy here. But this particular line of attack should have no place in the Democratic party (or anywhere else).

Submitted by hipparchia on

good one. mccain's sense of humor over this is going to make obama look like a stuffed shirt if he's not careful. i've gotten a real kick out of some of his lines, but then i come from a family that lives well into their 80s and 90s so he still looks like he's just barely grown out of young-whipper-snapper-hood if you ask me.

alzheimers [and other dementias too, iirc] run in families. i haven't heard any mention of any of his near relatives having any kind of dementias, so it's less likely he'd suffer from it. oh, wait, being a republican is a form of dementia in itself... the temper i do worry about though.

the heart attack thing is a definite possibility, but his 96-year-old mother is still going strong, so there's always a good chance he got enough of her good genes to offset his dad's bad ones. and it's not like we've never had a president die in office before. we'll cope.

i don't know about the rest of the country, but bashing mccain for his age isn't going to work here in florida. we've got lots and lots of sprightly sharp-witted o-l-d old people here that would take offense at that. probably their social security numbers are 1-7.

Damon's picture
Submitted by Damon on

Whatever anyone thinks of McCain, politically, the acceptance of blatant sexism and ageism in this campaign is nothing short of astounding. Watching the OFB gleefully, at times, attacking McCain's age is absolutely disgusting and vile. Really, I don't know how else to put how off-put I am by the hypocrisy. It's this type of cynicism by the OFB that shows how hollow their message of "hope & change" is.

oceansandmountains's picture
Submitted by oceansandmountains on

the most reliable voting bloc or anything. So, of course, why shouldn't the OFB piss all over them just like they've pissed all over almost every other voting demographic (except for college kiddies and the "creative class")

lambert's picture
Submitted by lambert on

Unity comes from shared principles and policies and how they play out in behavior.

[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

BDBlue's picture
Submitted by BDBlue on

is that McCain is old and rich (which seems to be the focus of an awful lot coming from the Obama camp these days) then we are all screwed. Because either McCain will be President or because Obama will be president and thinks the only thing he needs to do differently than what McCain would do is be younger and own fewer houses.

For the life of me, I do not understand a strategy for winning an election that's based on insulting an ever increasing list of blocs of voters. I didn't understand it when the Republicans did it in 1992 and I don't understand it now. Singling out one small group (blacks, gays), I get. I'm appalled, but I get. Singling out large segments of the voting population, I do not.

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